YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — On the 19th day of their climb, Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson, both now bearded, reached the summit of El Capitan’s Dawn Wall, completing a quest that included years of planning and that many considered the most challenging rock climb in the world.

Dozens of family members and friends greeted the climbers when they reached the top at 3:25 p.m. Wednesday, a cloudless day. After Caldwell hugged his wife and Jorgeson hugged his girlfriend, they were given sparkling wine. Jorgeson sprayed his. “That’s the first shower you’ve had in a while,” Caldwell’s wife, Rebecca, said.

Jorgeson said of their feat: “I hope it inspires people to find their own Dawn Wall, if you will. We’ve been working on this thing a long time, slowly and surely. I think everyone has their own secret Dawn Wall to complete one day, and maybe they can put this project in their own context.”

It was the first ascent of the 3,000-foot Dawn Wall in a single expedition with the use of only hands and feet to pull climbers up — a challenge long considered impossible. Ropes were merely safety devices to break the occasional fall.

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Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson spoke after their 19-day climb of the Dawn Wall on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, Calif.Published OnJan. 15, 2015CreditImage by Max Whittaker for The New York Times

The sunset view at the top was stunning. What was less clear was just what Caldwell and Jorgeson had achieved.

El Capitan is hardly unassailable. Its face was first rock-climbed in 1958, and it has been crisscrossed by countless climbers using roughly 100 known routes. With its summit a mere 7,569 feet above sea level, it is no Everest or McKinley. Thousands of visitors from around the world hike the eight steep miles to its top each year, including several who left before daybreak Wednesday to greet the climbers.

But that was part of what made this expedition monumental — El Capitan’s familiarity. It is one of the best-known pieces of granite in the world, majestic and monolithic, causing crane-necked, open-mouthed gawkers to stand at its base and drivers in Yosemite Valley to veer off the road.

“I think the larger audience’s conception is that we’re thrill seekers out there for an adrenaline rush,” Caldwell said. “We really aren’t at all. It’s about spending our lives in these beautiful places and forming these incredible bonds.”

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Caldwell, in green, with his wife, Rebecca, and Jorgeson embracing his girlfriend, Jacqui Becker, at the top of the cliff.CreditMax Whittaker for The New York Times

The entire climb was visible to anyone who wanted to watch through binoculars or long camera lenses while standing in a nearby meadow. And in recent days the assembly grew, some bringing camp chairs and nibbling on meats and cheeses, as history unfolded high above. From the wall, the climbers communicated through text messages and social media. Fans cheered success, and the climbers could hear it a moment later.

That was the magic that turned the quiet quest of two quiet men into a worldwide spectacle — an event both unimaginable and watchable. There was no mystery, but there was plenty of suspense.

“This is just amazing, really beautifully amazing, like a four-minute mile or a sub-two-hour marathon or Tiger Woods destroying every single major for a year or something, just off the charts awesome,” Will Gadd, an elite mountain sports athlete, said in an email message Tuesday.

For Caldwell, a 36-year-old from Estes Park, Colo., it was a goal that he could not shake since he first seriously conjured the idea a decade ago. It became his life-bending quest, a personal Moby Dick. Could every inch of the blank, vertical face of the Dawn Wall be climbed with nothing more than bare hands and rubber-soled shoes? He was not sure. He never was, really, until Wednesday.

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Caldwell led the last pitch of the Dawn Wall as Jorgeson belayed.CreditMax Whittaker for The New York Times

“From the outside it was starting to look like a Hemingway novel or something, an unresolvable quest,” said Gadd, who has known Caldwell for many years.

Jorgeson, 30, from Santa Rosa, Calif., learned about Caldwell’s vision in 2009 and asked if he wanted a partner. Each year since, the two have spent weeks and months, mostly in the fall and winter, attached to the Dawn Wall, scouting holds, practicing pitches, imagining how to do it all in one push from the valley floor.

El Capitan is the height of three Empire State Buildings stacked atop one another, but with many fewer, and smaller, things to hold on to on the way up. The climb was divided into 31 pitches, or sections, like way points on a dot-to-dot drawing. When one pitch was successfully navigated, the climbers stopped and prepared for the next. Much of the work was done in the cool of the evening, when hands would sweat less and the soles of their shoes had better grip.

Some pitches were well over 100 feet straight up the rock, while others were sideways shuffles to connect two vertical pitches. One required a dyno, a jump from one precarious hold to another. Falls were not unusual; Jorgeson needed seven days and 10 attempts to navigate the horizontal traverse of Pitch 15, unexpectedly slowing the expedition, which was blessed by an uncharacteristic stretch of dry weather.

Two pitches were rated at 5.14d on climbing’s scale of difficulty, making them among the hardest sections of rock ever climbed. Nearly all were rated at least 5.12. To many rock climbers, completing one such pitch would be a career highlight. Few can fathom the difficulty of stringing together nearly three dozen of them without returning to the ground.

The Dawn Wall, sometimes called the Wall of the Early Morning Light, was first climbed in 1970 by Warren Harding and Dean Caldwell (no relation to Tommy). But their ascent was a virtual siege, using more than 300 bolts and hundreds of feet of rope to pull themselves up over 27 days.

Storms pinned them to the wall for long stretches, but the men refused rescue attempts, dropping notes to the valley floor and, at one point, greeting would-be rescuers on the wall with an offer of wine. When the men reached the top, they were greeted by a crowd of 70 and enjoyed champagne and fried chicken.

Their assault was widely criticized by those in the climbing community who preferred a quieter, more minimalist ascent. Royal Robbins, a rival of Harding’s, went up the Dawn Wall and cut many of the bolts sprinkled up the rock.

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Jorgeson removed tape from his battered hands.CreditMax Whittaker for The New York Times

Few, if any, thought the Dawn Wall could be free-climbed, using just strength and guile — not ropes and equipment — for upward propulsion. Earlier attempts by Caldwell and Jorgeson had been aborted by bad weather, injuries and an inability to get past certain pitches.

Not this time.

When Harding reached the top of the Dawn Wall in 1970, he was asked why he had done it and said, “Because we’re insane!”

Why did Caldwell and Jorgeson do it?

“For me, I love to dream big, and I love to find ways to be a bit of an explorer,” Caldwell said. “These days it seems like everything is padded and comes with warning labels. This just lights a fire under me, and that’s a really exciting way to live.”

Jorgeson said the Dawn Wall “was the biggest canvas and the most audacious project I could join and see to the finish.”

“Like Tommy,” he added, “I don’t know what is next.”

After a summit celebration, they were eager to return to the valley floor for a bigger celebration, and the chance to soak in both a warm shower and whatever adulation awaited once they returned to the view of anyone who wanted to watch.

Soon, they would be back over the edge, headed down, and the top of El Capitan was alone and quiet again.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B13 of the New York edition with the headline: Pursuing the Impossible, and Coming Out on Top. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe